I have ranted about this before and I have no doubt I will again. Blame New Year re-organisation. I started 2014 in a pretty good place. I’m superstitious when it comesto New Year’s Eve and January 1st believing that it somehow affects the entirety of the following year so I normally try to do all the things I would like to be doing for the next twelve months. This year was a great one, a lovely dinner with good friends during which we drank a lot of fizz (with stars in it!), ate homemade profiteroles and planned our summer holiday, followed by several games of roulette. I started off badly and then won big, by 2am I wanted to lose so I could go to bed and bet everything on black, twice, winning both times, in fact we did stop then because I’d broken the bank. I am taking this to mean that the year will be a slow build but I should take a few risks to reap the benefits. Before sleep I wrote a page of a short story and then read a page of A Kind of Loving. This month I plan on finishing my short story collection (almost there) and ploughing on with my Yorkshire-set novel.

I have also decided to submit my writing everywhere possible (journals, competitions, events) in the hope that spread betting will eventually pay off. To do this I realise I have to be more organised. Last year I had a very hit and miss approach to submitting work. I’d often send things off on a last minute whim and fail to make a note of doing so, or I’d scribble it down on a post it note and forget about it, sometimes even a line in an obscure submissions folder. I’ve spent a few hours now going through my frankly anarchic submissions files and I can tell you the process is not helped the failure of many organisers to even acknowledge a submission. The number of deadlines passed, journals published, awards presented, all missed by me (and presumably most of the other people who sent work in) is astonishing. Here’s my rant – FFS IF PEOPLE SEND YOU THEIR WORK AT LEAST HAVE THE MANNERS TO A) ACKNOWLEDGE IT AND B) TELL THEM WHO GOT THROUGH!!!!!

Obviously a huge amount of comps, journals and events organisers are just as polite as they should be, some even more so, some even offer feedback or copies of anthologies to their hopefuls but many do not. I salute you if you are one of the good guys. You were probably a struggling author once, deciding if you could have a tin of beans for tea or save the money for that big break competition. Many others out there seem to just want to take your money and pull the shutters down until next year when they send you an email asking for more money. If you can send a round robin email asking for more money you can send one on the publication of the long list. I don’t really get it – don’t you want people to know who has been successful? Why not? What are you hiding for? Some of the organisations I’m talking about here are big ones with equally big entrance fees. Sort it out. Don’t be so fucking rude.

Last night I went to the Rattle Tales selection meeting for our first show of 2014. We had a huge number of submission for this show, many more than ever before. It was quite a stretch to read them all but everybody did, notes were taken and decisions were made. When anyone submits to Rattle Tales, they get an acknowledgement right away, when the stories have been selected everyone who submitted gets an email telling them if they have been successful or not and then (if they want it) we give them feedback. It’s just good manners really. Lots of people do it. The first two emails are standard so don’t take that much effort to send. I’m not taking the credit for this, I’m not the one whose job it is to send them out, but I don’t think it takes hours to do a quick reply.

Think about it – what sort of reputation do you want amongst potential submitters?

Rant over.

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It’s that time of year again, the time when we try to enrich our lives, to make ourselves into better individuals, the time of the New Year resolution. A few years ago I made my most successful resolution, the one I found easiest to stick to, the one that had the most tangible results. It was to do with giving something up but it wasn’t anything like chocolate or wine. The thing I gave up was unnecessary cleaning. I vowed to do the minimum amount of domestic chores I could get away with without the house turning into Miss Havisham’s dining room. In all honesty the house didn’t look that much different. There are two small boys in my house, they pick things up, play with them for a bit and put them down on the nearest surface. They are constantly hungry and leave empty bowls, plates and glasses around the house every 5 minutes, wrappers, apple cores etc. They kick off their shoes and drop their coats, DVD boxes, books, Lego. They don’t mean to be messy it just comes naturally. I would spend hours tidying, days putting things away. Four years ago I stopped doing it. With the time I gained not tidying up I wrote a novel, completed an MA and helped set up a spoken word co-operative. It has been the most satisfying New Year’s trade-off I ever made. I have the time to write every day, yes the house won’t win home of the year but visitors don’t really notice unless I point it out to them. The washing gets done, the dishwasher gets loaded and I occasionally run the hoover about but polishing? Ironing? No chance; I’ve got a story to write. Last year I wrote a themed short story collection without even realising I’d done it. Ten stories accumulated over the course of the year – this was in addition to work on my novel, five Rattle Tales events and a bit of poetry.

This year my resolution is to continue with actual creativity rather than wasting time on domesticity, as Quentin Crisp said, after the first ten years you don’t notice the dust. No one ever had a clean picture frame published. What’s this I have in my hand? Oh yes, a paperback with my name on it!

It’s not just the cleaning – ditch watching telly too. It’s all rubbish. Ok, there may be that un-missable event series once a week but let’s face it the rest of it is crap. I let this slide last year but in 2013 it is my intention to stop watching mindless drivel and turn to the keyboard instead. I want this year to be my most creative yet. I want to write more, perform more, and get work into more festivals and magazines. I want Rattle Tales to go further than we could ever have imagined and, most of all, when this year is up I want to say with all honesty that I didn’t waste it.

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Starlings long listed

Starlings has been long listed for the 2012 Edge Hill University Short Story Prize in a year with a record number of entries, sharing company with entries from Edna O'Brien, Hanan Al-Shaykh and Robert Minhinnick.